Goldman Sachs doesn’t oversee Texas utilities

Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi Cruz, were criticized for leaving their home in Houston for Cancun during prolonged outages that left Texans across the state without power or heat during recent winter storms.  

But a claim spreading on social media that connects the Republican senator’s wife to Texas utilities is wrong.

"DO YOU KNOW," one post says, "Heidi Cruz, Ted’s wife, is managing director of Goldman Sachs. They oversee the Texas utilities."

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Heidi Cruz is a managing director in the Consumer and Wealth Management Division of Goldman Sachs. But the company does not have a controlling stake in any U.S. energy or utility company, spokesperson Leslie Shribman told us. 

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"Some of these social media comments may be referring to an investment made by a Goldman Sachs fund as part of a private equity consortium that bought TXU in 2007," Shribman said, referring to an electricity provider in Texas, "but following the company’s bankruptcy years ago, we no longer had a stake."

TXU was owned by private equity firms led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, TPG Capital and the buyout arm of Goldman Sachs, the New York Times reported, but after the buyout, natural gas prices dropped, and the equity invested by the owners was "all but wiped out" by 2012.  

In Texas, the electricity grid’s main operator is the nonprofit Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. It manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million customers, and it’s governed by a board of directors that includes industry representatives, among others.

ERCOT is subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s electric, telecommunication, water and sewer utilities.  

Gov. Greg Abbott called on ERCOT’s leadership to resign in the wake of grid failures during the winter storm and he has made reforming the group an emergency item for the 2021 legislative session, which is now underway. 

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